Chapter Thirty-SixOstend, Belgium, Autumn 2003
Alexei and Arturo sat passively on the sofa, their eyes seemingly glued to the screen of the widescreen television in the corner of the room. They were watching the movie Schindlers List, and were intently viewing the scenes of cruelty and deprivation being carried out on the helpless victims of Nazi aggression and racial cleansing. On the surface, not much had changed since the days when, as young boys, they'd watched television in this self-same room, studying the many and varied ways that mankind had devised throughout history to inflict pain and suffering on each other. Now, though, there was a subtle difference. The two men no longer had need of such images in order to learn; now they watched them as a means of achieving a perverse grati
